“I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to
spend the rest of my life.”
—George Burns, late
great cigar smoking comedian

As a species, we just can’t get ahead.

Despite the many innovations that have bettered humans’ ability
to look into the future, the ongoing convergence of these
technologies and information structures has accelerated the pace of
change, making it harder for us to imagine what’s just around the
corner. New blogs (Tech Crunch, Mashable, Gizmodo), trend trackers
(TechMeme,
Buzz Market,
Trendio) and
prediction markets (Inkling, Predictify, Zii Trend) are useful and
necessary attempts to claim back our forecasting advantage. Adding
to such efforts is the brand new Future Blogger, a site
that aims to take discussion of the wider future to the next
level.

On behalf of the Future Blogger team:
Welcome!!

Future Blogger is a blog network focused on exploring
ground-breaking information related to the future. The site
combines rich top-down reporting and images with broad bottom-up
content generated by a community with diverse interests. Experts
and amateurs alike can contribute predictions, scenarios, trend
analyses, future fiction, illustrations, videos and any other
future-related content. Guided by a community feedback system, the
best posts are funneled to the top, to the front page and a broader
audience, where they receive increased community feedback. These
posts are also submitted to Future Scanner, a future-focused
digg-clone that both amplifies the signal of Future Blogger and
serves as a valuable resource for future bloggers working on new
posts.

All that being said, what does all of this mean for you, the
future-interested web surfer?

For one, you can regularly check out the main pages of both
Future Blogger and Future Scanner to quickly get an overview of the
wild future ahead of us. Go deeper by filtering content by future
year and category or by exploring other posts by your favorite
future bloggers. And make sure to take advantage of our various
RSS feeds and Facebook widget if you’re
pressed for time.

It’s also easy (and free) to open an account that lets you
comment, vote, submit cool links and keep track of your favorite
content. Taking a moment to setup a MemeBox account will not only
help organize your simulation of the future, it will serve to
incorporate your feedback into the broader site, helping shape the
overall direction and content.

For those of you looking to contribute memes to the global
future dialogue, there’s no better place to post your thoughts,
predictions, illustrations and scenarios than Future Blogger.
Whether you’re an established writer looking to extend your reach,
or an up-and-coming thinker seeking feedback and an audience,
teaming with the Future Blogger community is a win-win proposition.
You can easily submit original or cross-posted content through your
user account to engage an active future-focused community.

Together, Future Blogger and Future Scanner represent a new
method for imagining the future ahead of us. As Burns said, we’re
all going to spend the rest of our lives there, so it’s important
that we better our simulation of what’s coming next. We’re psyched
that you’ve ventured our way and hope you’ll stick around as we
build a valuable resource and thread together visions of the
possible tomorrows ahead of us.

Here at MemeBox, Sunday is the day we look back at all of the
Future Blogger posts and Future Scanner submissions in an effort to
distill and condense the
best of what you, the community, have contributed to the site and
the broader world throughout the previous 7 days.

My favorite part of this process is the doling out of our weekly
contributor awards. So, without further ado, the community kudos go
to:

Of course, a big thank you is also in order for everyone who
helped make Week #1 a great success. We’ve been delighted by the
response and the terrific quality of the information that you’ve
shared. On behalf of everyone at MemeBox Central: Danke Schön!

Stay tuned as we continue to develop the site, fix bugs and add
more and more dynamic content. Be sure to shoot me any suggestions
that you may have so that we may more effectively build a resource
that best suits your needs.

Marisa is the MemeBox Community Manager. She can be
contacted at marisa[at]memebox.com

What does the future of energy look like in the 21st century? Which elements will remain the same? Which emerging technologies might reinvent how we look at energy? Most importantly, how quickly might things change?

Dear Future Blogger Readers,

In case you haven’t already clicked on the new button in our right-hand column, MemeBox.com, Your Forum for the Future, is proud to point you in the direction of The Energy Roadmap. Edited by energy industry futurist Garry Golden (who we’re thrilled to have officially join the MemeBox team), the new blog/site focuses on the most disruptive ideas poised to transform the energy industry over the next decade and beyond.

“The Energy Roadmap aims to bridge the gap between emerging energy technology and deeply rooted accelerating change,” says MemeBox CEO Jeff Hilford, “Garry’s professional background in energy and futures studies will open up new conversations on the future of energy. We are very pleased to add his unique voice to the mix.”

The sheer scale of the energy industry means that most changes will happen gradually, but the sector is not immune to the power of disruptive technologies, accelerating change and entrepreneurial business models. The Energy Roadmap seeks to place these dynamics into the proper context around some of the biggest ideas shaping the future:

“Energy has become synonymous with the future,” points out Garry Golden, Editor of The Energy Roadmap, “Global demand for energy will double in only a few decades. Incremental improvements will simply not be enough to meet increasing expectations for clean and abundant energy. And we expect disruptive energy systems to emerge from the convergence of new science, technology and business models. The Energy Roadmap is the first blog explicitly devoted to this structured debate about the future of energy.

This blog, Scenario Land, is the culmination of my burning drive to make futurism more accessible to the people who just don’t have the time nor the interest to pore through awesome books like Mega Trends, The Fourth Turning, and The Singularity is Near. The intent is to strike a balance between entertainment and technical trend analysis, establishing a portal where creative and critical thinkers alike can engage the future together.

It’s a place where you can fearlessly share your thoughts on the world of tomorrow. Whether your strength lies in narrative story-telling, essay writing, illustration, composite imaging, comics, video, machinima or elsewhere, Scenario Land is a broadcast platform that can amplify your visions of the future. If you’ve got a big imagination and a desire to debate the road ahead, this is the place to make that happen.

I plan on using it to evolve my simulation of the future and sincerely hope you will do the same.

MemeBox is proud to announce the launch of Scenario Land. Edited by futurist and Future Blogger co-editor Alvis Brigis, the new site tackles the future head-on through a provocative blend of speculative fiction and plausible trend-informed scenarios.

“Striking the balance between entertainment and empirical futurism, Scenario Land is a place where creative and critical thinkers alike can engage the future,” says Brigis, “Whether your strength lies in narrative story-telling, essay writing, illustration, composite imaging, comics, video, machinima or elsewhere, Scenario Land is a great outlet for sharing and debating visions of our future.”

As a branch of MemeBox’s FutureBlogger network, Scenario Land overlaps with other future-focused sister blogs including The Energy Roadmap (theenergyroadmap.com) and Future of Gadgets (launching soon). This unique system allows Scenario Land to retain a unique voice while also amplifying reach and inviting valuable perspectives from other niche focus areas.

“Change is accelerating, making it increasingly difficult to envision the futures ahead of us,” points out MemeBox CEO Jeff Hilford, “So our goal here at MemeBox is to create a rich, interactive playground that allows you to explore various trends and tomorrows. Scenario Land is a key part of our growing ecosystem where people can fearlessly speculate about and debate all things future.”

If you’ve got a big imagination for the future and want to contribute your thoughts about a rapidly changing world, Scenario Land is the place to get it all out and spread your powerful ideas.

If you’re near the San Francisco Bay Area this evening, Friday the 16th, then I strongly encourage you to swing by the monthly Future Salon featuring Foresight Institute President
Christine Peterson who will be presenting on the provocative topic:

Open Source Sensing: Using open source & nanotechnology to reduce surveillance & head off Iraq-style wars.

Christine, who coined the term “open source”, contends that distributed approaches will be critical to combating the inherently distributed terrorism phenomenon:

In the U.S. and other countries, concerns regarding terrorism are driving massive new centralized surveillance systems, with little or no regard for their potential effect on civil liberties. However, unlike nuclear weapons delivered by ICBMs, terrorism is inherently a bottom-up, distributed challenge, requiring a similar response. Open source software provides a useful model for a set of technologies that address security concerns in a distributed way, with the added benefit of relatively fast response time.

We can use open source techniques, combined with the latest in sensing technologies, as an alternative to centralized surveillance. Such technologies could also build trust when used in arms control applications, potentially heading off “wars of forced inspection” such as the recent war in Iraq.